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This just happened in my fort, and i thought it was really cool. My current fort is getting pretty large. We have weathered many goblin sieges and even captured and publicly executed the goblin civ’s war leader. We are still bothered by kidnappers from time to time, however.

One such kidnapper showed up right by one of my children. Rather then stuffing him in a sack right away, he decided to tear up the poor kids arm with his knife. The kid was a quick little bugger and managed to run away even with his injuries. I dispatched my steel clad hammerlords to deal with this, but i figured the kid was probably done for.

The kid actually managed to give the goblin the slip, and i noticed one of my hammerlords was gaining on the goblin. On a whim i checked his relationships, and it turns out the kid that got stabbed was his little brother!

What followed was what really surprised me. He was a hammerlord, he could have ended this goblin in a few strikes and been done with it, but he didn’t. He sat there and beat the everloving shit out of this goblin with his silver hammer for a really long time, longer than i have ever seen an armed dwarf fight a goblin. He kept biting him and shaking him around, he smashed out all his teeth and broke his limbs, and in particular he kept on hitting him in the right hand, even though it was essentially mush.

Only after the goblin finally passed out from his myriad injuries did Feb Wheeledtomes the confederacies of raining finally bring his hammer down one more time on the goblins head and ended his suffering.

I don’t know if it is just a coincidence or if he was exacting some dwarfy revenge for the attack on his little brother, but i love this friggin game

It had been many happy and peaceful seasons since embarking. The fortress was thriving and migrants were common. 100 happy dwarves lived next to a river delta in a 3-story deep fortress. It was not well organized, nor grand in any way, but it was home. Shortly after another migrant wave and a human merchant caravan arrived, the goblins struck.

The fortress was not without a militia, but it was meant to keep thieves and snatchers at bay, certainly not a goblin invasion. While the civilians rushed to the meeting hall on the lowest level, the humble militia guarded the drawbridge. Once all the civilians had made it inside, they retreated and raised the bridge. Two dwarves had fallen. But they had died saving the fortress.

The goblins would not be able to attack the fortress directly, but unfortunately for the dwarves, this was only the beginning. Soon, the alcohol ran dry and without a fresh water source within the fortress walls, dwarves began to die of thirst. They frantically dug through cavern walls into stagnant pools for temporary respite, and even raided the trapped trade caravan. But there was not enough to drink. Several dwarves went insane, another turned up dead drained of blood, and still more succumbed to thirst. The few sane dwarves that remained knew that the fortress was lost and could not bear the sound of their brothers and sisters murdering each other in thoughtless rage. In an effort to preserve the memory of the fortress, they tunneled into the nearby river delta.

The fortress flooded, then winter came and entombed the fortress in ice. When the last cry faded into the frozen wasteland, the goblins left.

My newest fort is basically Hotel California. You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave — because there’s a swarm of 291 (and growing!) undead outside the barricaded entrance.

I embarked to an evil biome and was pleasantly surprised by the lack of bloodsucking monsters. Then, a vile red slush crept in. It didn’t instantly kill my dwarves so I figured it was harmless. Turns out that it seems to induce unconsciousness through a fever, and suffocates everything to death. Only the two dwarves I had mining the initial base survived. My current goal is to accumulate enough wealth so that the humans will send trade caravans. Then I’m hoping enough will die so that the humans, elves, and goblins will all send armies to Tomeblankets…

I always try to go for some sort of “Hall of Legends” near my Great Hall somewhere, and right after an ambush/siege/tantrum spiral I have my engravers start engraving and my craftsdwarves start making statues. If a legendary dwarf falls in such a battle, chances are they will engrave/make statues of him/her. So I find an engraving of the battle, put the statue of the fallen hero next to it, and put the best coffin I have next to that.

This all comes from a time I named a bunch of my initial dwarves after some friends and myself, and we all died in a glorious battle with about 10 cave dragons, the last of us dying from our wounds, but victorious. I decided to make a tomb next to the great hall to put us in, and some statues to increase the value to stop a tantrum spiral. By sheer chance I inspected my heroes’ tombs and they each had a statue of themselves next to their coffin. And engravings of the battle covered the walls. It was glorious.

Sadly, the next siege had about 100 goblins and 20 cave dragons, and with all my legendary dwarves dead, I didn’t stand a chance.

Work on the guard towers was nearing completion. The mechanics were busy preparing traps for the next inevitable goblin invasion. The windmills were creaking in the crisp mountain air, the crops were in full bloom, and food and ale were plentiful. The marksdwarves complained good-naturedly about having to practice in the sun, but the glare and heat were far preferable to the horrors of cave adaptation. From the barracks came the clanking and grunting of the melee squad honing their skills.

A sudden goblin attack had left the fort wary, and several dwarves had been found in their beds, bloodless and desiccated. A vampire was on the loose somewhere, but it had yet to slip up.

Ringwild’s walls were strong. Its forges were hot, its craftsmen were legend, its halls were vast and opulent. The Windy Grains knew of these treasures, of the riches to be had. And so they came.

The smell of death on the air.

The horror of fifty corpses, trudging in unison towards the walls.

The shrieks of the goblin ambush as they were torn to shreds by rotting hands.

The shouts of dwarven panic as they attempted to close up the walls.

The masons were the first to fall. Fearlessly running to the open wall, hauling stones, attempting to shore up the open wall. Bolts whizzed past them, lodging uselessly in shambling flesh. Decaying hands, ripping, tearing, striking.

The melee squad charged forward. Two corpses fell, three, four, and then the horde was upon them. Dwarf after dwarf, ripped apart, lives cut short at the hands of the undead.

The rest of the fort was soon among the ranks of the dead, raised back into unholy motion by dark powers.

Except one.

He still stood in the main courtyard, axe flashing left to slice off a leg, right to sever an arm, back, forth, an impenetrable wall of razor-sharp iron. He darted from zombie to zombie, reducing the undead to piles of butchered meat. To Ringwild, he was Nomald Cobaltseasons, the elderly, battle-scarred master of the axe.

For months he fought the undead, searching for the invisible masters of the rotting army, to no avail. He fought without tire, without food, and without drink, single-mindledy crushing every undead abomination in his view, seemingly blind to their inevitable reanimation moments later.

Until, one day, he stopped. He hadn’t eaten, hadn’t drank, hadn’t laid down for months.

He dropped his axe.

He wandered, thirsty, back into the halls of Ringwild, but the stocks of alcohol did not beckon him.

He passed the great dining room, with its barrels filled to the brim with the feasts of master chefs, but did not slow.

Nomald walked (slower, now, than before) on the familiar smooth rock towards the masonry, ignoring the piles of furniture that had never been used, would never be used…

And, as the spirits of his restless comrades swirled around the room, he began to carve, slowly, painstakingly, a coffin, and a large slab of rock.

He dragged them both to the center hall of Ringwild; once the Stronghold of the Sabres of Helping, now the Slaughterhouse of the Windy Grains.

He took up hammer and chisel with shaking hands, carved the slab as best he could. Four hundred thirty-two years of life, and not a single engraving to his name.

And, with a final effort, he hauled himself into his coffin. He closed his eyes, and waited for the wailing spirits to end the long, bloody history of Nomald Cobaltseasons, known to the world as Das Clincheddreamy: the Unkempt Word of Splashes, murderer of five dwarves in Ringwild and thousands more across the world; vampire.

You have to look at it from their perspective. It’s easy to say that they’re snapping easily when you’re just looking at things from outside the monitor and reading events in lines on the screen.

When a dwarf gets a serious wound, though, they are likely to be maimed for life. It’s not so strange for extremely tough, previously self-reliant types of people to completely flip out when faced with that sort of thing.

And we’re not talking about ‘seeing a rat’. We’re talking about having the fortress that you slaved to create crawling with rats. We’re talking rats and vermin crawling over you while you sleep and eating the food out of your hands.

And don’t forget the other things. Portions of the fortress are covered in noxious, wretched miasmas of decay so thick that they actually obscure your view. Friends and relatives die regularly and are sometimes just left to rot on the ground. Wild raccoons and other horrible monsters are just waiting for the chance to rip out your throat. If you make a mistake or fail to meet a production order, the sheriff cuts you to pieces with an axe. Horrible creatures regularly crawl out of your drinking water and try to murder you in your beds. Filthy new immigrants are constantly being shoved into your fortress’ cramped quarters, forcing you to work yourself down to the bone to get new quarters ready and leaving you with barely enough food to get through the winter. And when food runs out, you’re reduced to grubbing for rats, beetles, and worms in order to survive.

And then, when inspiration finally strikes–when you finally a chance to do what you’ve been dreaming to do for your entire life, the one reason you really went through the hell of this horrible fortress, the one true Dwarven dream–when you finally feel inspiration strike you and can see the form of your artifact in your head, you end up wasting three months doing nothing as your incompetent leaders fail to provide you with the necessary materials. Eventually, the vision begins to fade and you realize you can no longer remember what the artifact you’d waited your entire life for even looks like. Wouldn’t you go mad, too?

Don’t ask why your dwarves go insane or throw tantrums. Ask how they manage to stay sane the rest of the time.

My dungeon master was a pretty interesting guy. I’ve never met someone who loved cloaks as much as he did – enough that he worked pretty hard covering his floor with them. I guess that works as improvised carpeting. Pretty clever little guy.